Battle for the Baltic Islands, 1917 by Gary Staff

Author:Gary Staff [Staff, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Naval, Europe, Germany, Russia & the Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9781783033188
Google: 0fvLDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2009-03-09T00:29:23+00:00

One of Graschdanin’s crew, V Ogilvi, later wrote:

Shooting in the semi-darkness on our own battery, that was constructed with such labour and quickness, and for the entire summer and autumn of the 1917 campaigns had successfully defended the Irben position, was to give it away too cheaply. Finally we were surrounded by a gloomy, but grand picture: fires, enemy aeroplanes, machine-guns firing, circled by boats and tugs with people, who in panic had deserted their posts on the batteries and had not even managed to demolish their weapons, and the valuable guns had been abandoned to the enemy. All this, captured together, is engraved in the memory of every participant of our campaign to Zerel.

It was now almost completely dark and time to begin the return journey to Kuiwast. However, first Graschdanin took aboard some eighty or so men, soldiers and sailors, from an overcrowded tug. The escorting Amurets took aboard 150 men, but only two officers. Then the battleship departed for Moon Sound, escorted by Amurets, and accompanied by the steamer General Zimmerman and several tugs, all overcrowded. One tug towed a barge with 200 men aboard. The speed of the curious unit was low, just 6 knots.

The torpedoboat-destroyers Steregushchi and Turkmenets Stravropski lowered their boats, taking fifty-seven and forty-six men aboard respectively. They rendezvoused with the Graschdanin unit south of Abro and followed in its wake. Previously that evening Kontreadmiral Hopman had sent the following wireless order to UC57, stationed off the southern Moon Sound: ‘A ship of the Slava class is traveling from Sworbe to Moon Sound tonight. Attack!’ Towards 0145hrs on a clear night, UC57 sighted two destroyers on an easterly course, obviously an anti-submarine screen of the Russian unit. As Kapitänleutnant Wissmann carried out his attack and the range reduced to 2,000 metres, one of the Russian destroyers suddenly turned towards the U-boat at high speed, forcing UC57 to crash dive. The Russians quickly passed out of range for a successful torpedo attack.

During the morning the Russian unit was met off the entrance to Moon Sound by the torpedoboats Donskoi Kazak and Razyashchi. At 0800hrs on 16 October, Graschdanin, the torpedoboats, the steamer General Zimmerman and four tugs entered Kuiwast.

At around 0530hrs on the morning of 15 October, Fregattenkapitän von Rosenberg assembled his S-Flotilla and ran into the Kleinen Sound to support the German troops near Orrisar and the stone dam. His leader boat, T144, drew too much water to allow her to proceed further so therefore the flotilla chief boarded the small torpedoboot A29. In the Kleinen Sound an Army liaison officer was put ashore to establish contact with Section Winterfeld. After about an hour the officer reported the situation ashore by wireless and requested immediate bombardment of the head of the stone dam on Moon and the dam itself, and at the same time requested munitions and provisions. The A-boats immediately began the bombardment. On this the Russian V Division Torpedoboat-Destroyers, consisting of Vsadnik and Moskvityanin, opened fire on the A-boats, whereupon the IFdT, Kommodore Heinrich, ordered them to pull back.

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